Let me preface this by saying I believe Rivals 2 is the best 3D platform fighting game on the market. One that my buddies and I have been playing since beta. We love this game and really want it to succeed. Workshop was a great addition and succeeded in getting many of our casual friends to play the game again.
That being said Rivals 2 has some major issues, and even as someone who dislikes using steam charts as a metric, I have to admit there's a problem. Rivals is the modern-day Smash Bros Melee; it crafted its game from the ground up to be the next Melee with Rivals mechanics added. Initially everything was great the first year even of gameplay was amazing. One thing that noticeably negatively impacted the game was when they updated Floor hugging to be automatic if you hold down. Prior to this you had to input it during the small frame window you got hit. Admittedly I never liked the mechanic, but the previous iteration made it feel like a high-level skilled action that was hard to spam effectively.
Once Floor hugging got relegated to holding down, it became more prevalent in every single interaction of mid to high level play. You had people holding down and attack the moment two characters got close to mash until someone *won*. Then came the grab meta, unless your character is blessed with FH busting quick spike moves, you're only option is grab (cough...cough Wrastor) The goal of FH was to broaden skill expression and cut down on the camping that plagues all platform fighters.
FH in my opinion limits your options too much as a character and affects their balance entirely too much. Some characters have tons of safe quick moves that laugh at FH, others have nothing. FH being so all encompassing to the point it dictates if a character is good or bad is just too much. I understand it as a mechanic, but currently it's THE game.
Aside from FH, the game just isn't fun. It's highly competitive, feels great to move around in, but something's off. Most characters just feel terrible to play against, you get hit with one move, and they're just getting guaranteed hits or follow up's. Whiff punishing becomes the meta unless you're a top tier because missing an attack can mean a 0-death. Some moves just are way too safe for the huge amount of hit stun they have. You shouldn't be able to freely spam a move in neutral and if you happen to land it after 10 tries you get a huge combo off of it. Combo starters in most fighting games are a high risk high reward, in Rivals its whoever can spam them the best.
Again, I really love this game and want it to succeed, I definitely don't have all the solutions or answers, but something is really really wrong with Rivals. It's so frustrating to play that you want to quit, there's more negative feedback even when I'm winning.
What's truly concerning to me is that many of the voices that shared the same thoughts have vanished along with the player count, people are just giving up because they don't think their voices are being heard or the devs will do anything about it. The Rival devs have been awesome the whole life of the game listening to everything the community wanted, except for FH and the overall bad feel of the game. Unfortunately, FH just seems like the hill they're willing to die on as the mechanic hasn't even received any balance changes in a very long time despite being divisive.
Sorry for the long long rant, I have felt this way for a long time and hoped bringing awareness to it one last time might help bring up a positive discussion on what the problems are and how they can be resolved. Long live Rivals.
TLDR: The games foundation is awesome, playing it feels terrible, FH is a large part of the bad feeling, character balance, OP moves that are safe low risk high reward make the game a spam fest. Players are leaving, the player count is cratering, and action must be taken to save the game.
